This contraption winds wires. I just took a scavenged 12v geared motor epoxied to a mounting plate and soldered up 12v barrel jack. Then I used a LM7805 regulator to knock that down to 5v which I fed that into an ESP32 dev board. I used a TIP120 darlington transistor (and protection diode) as the motor driver. And mounted a piece of wood and 2 clips to the motor shaft.
The end result made a web controlled wire winder! I can clip 2 wires to this end, and start and stop the winding while holding the other ends of the wire. Winding each wire individually in the reverse direction (with a drill) before clipping them to this winder creates a reverse twisting force that makes the final wire hang more or less straight.
The web server (Arduino-based) also lets you blink an onboard LED for test purposes:
